Innovations for requirements engineering

Abstract : The objective of the 15 Monterey workshops since 1992 has been to increase the practical impact of the formal methods in computer-aided software development . The workshops seek to improve software practice via the application of engineering theory and to encourage development of engineering theory that is well suited for this purpose. The 2007 workshop focused on requirements, particularly the process of transforming vague and uncoordinated needs of individual stakeholders into consistent and well-defined requirements that are suitable for supporting automated and computer aided methods for engineering subtasks in the subsequent development process. Innovations are effective technology transfers of sound inventions. The workshop case study was targeted at identification and assessment of sound inventions of technology that can be used to support innovations in requirement engineering. For example, we wanted to gain a better understanding about how to deal with natural language as the vehicle from which we derive system/software requirements, how to use intelligent agents as entities to facilitate semi-automatic requirements-documentation analysis, and how to build automatic systems to aid in requirements/specifications elicitation. The overall aim was to exchange ideas for continued research in the intersection of these two areas and to reduce the gap between theory and practice.